Various techniques have long been employed to extract water from a cloth or chamois. When washing or drying a vehicle, for example, people frequently twist the cloth with their hands in a wringing motion to remove excess water and then straighten the cloth by spreading it and shaking it back to its original sheet-like shape which typically results in dropping the cloth to the ground. This technique, although both inefficient and a nuisance, is commonly employed since reliable, efficient, and cost effective devices for better accomplishing this task are not available, or have not been widely accepted due to their expense and/or complexity.
Washing machines from the 1930-1950's era often employed rollers for wringing water from clothes before drying, with the cloth being forcibly sandwiched between adjacent rollers. These wringing mechanisms were typically mounted on a post atop the washing machine adjacent the washer tub, and were powered by a small electric motor. These wringing devices did not efficiently remove excess water from the cloth and were difficult to operate, partially because the cloth tended to get bunched, and the rollers smooth when wet, so that the cloth would not feed between the roller, and often had to be pulled through by the operator while the powered rollers were activated. This powered drive mechanism presented a significant safety risk to fingers when a cloth became bunched between the rollers, since one's fingers were closely adjacent the powered rollers during attempts to "spread out" the bunched cloth to eliminate the feed-through problem. Accordingly, present day washers typically utilize the centrifugal action of a spinning container to safely remove excess water from cloth. Such spinners can, however, be easily abused by uncaring individuals. Automatic shutoff mechanisms can be overridden, and such devices generally are offered for use by the general public only when sufficient usage justifies a full time employee to oversee operation of numerous such spinners.
Accordingly, neither of the above-described mechanisms are well suited for continued use in an outdoor environment particularly by relatively inexperience personnel. These prior art mechanisms are expensive to manufacture, and costly to maintain. While some car washing operations may be sufficiently large to justify an employee to "spin dry" towels used by other employees to dry cars, patrons of most self-service car washing operations continue to manually wring out towels and chamois. Similarly, individuals who wash their cars at home cannot justify the expense and/or location inconvenience of currently available equipment to eliminate water from towels and chamois.
The disadvantages of the prior art are overcome by the present invention, and an improved mechanism is hereinafter provided for inexpensively, reliably and safely removing water from a cloth, chamois, or similar sheet-like absorbant material.